


Inertia

by The_Bookkeeper



Series: Shelter [4]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-09 22:44:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Bookkeeper/pseuds/The_Bookkeeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor is not alright, but he’s getting there, with the help of Torchwood Three and some well-earned respite, until an international crisis forces him to once again take the fate of the planet Earth in his hands. It may be just what he needs – or it may be his undoing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set about a month after the epilogue of Damage Control, to which this is a sequel. You can probably enjoy this story without reading its predecessor, but you may be confused on a couple points. This is more plot-heavy (i.e., it actually has one) but it is still, essentially, about the characters, particularly the Doctor and Jack.
> 
> On Torchwood’s secrecy: yes, it is supposed to be beyond top secret, but it is obvious from the show (and Doctor Who) that it is fairly well-known in its area of Wales, at least among the police force and UNIT. The good Captain, bless him, is not exactly one for being inconspicuous. CoE aside, under certain circumstances I can see an international crisis forcing Torchwood Three out of their slightly delusional belief of their own secrecy.
> 
> Getting on with it!
> 
> In which there is an alien plague, Dr. Charles Anderson is uncomfortable, and Captain Jack Harkness makes a suggestion he’s been putting off

Dr. Charles Anderson was having an absolutely terrible week. Not that he often had what would be called a  _good_  week — one rarely did, when they were divorced twice over and working for the United States’ worst-kept secret — but this one had been particularly Bad.   
  
Worldwide outbreaks of deadly alien plagues tended to do that.  
  
Also, emergency meetings. He  _hated_  emergency meetings, or any meetings, for that matter, especially with all these military types. They always made Charles acutely aware of several uncomfortable facts, such as how pear-shaped he had become in recent years and his tendency to sweat when he was nervous.  
  
It wasn’t just him feeling the stress this time, though. Even the head of Torchwood, whom Charles remembered as being irritatingly put together during the last crisis he had met him in, was looking weary, and far older than his forty-some years. Vaguely, Charles wondered who he had lost, or was losing — a parent, a sibling, a lover? A child, even? There wasn’t a person in the room who wasn’t affected. His own sister was in the hospital at this very moment, fighting for her life. The doctors said that her youngest — Charles’ only niece, Lydia —wouldn't make it through the week. She was only five years old.  
  
“Our scientists are completely stumped,” Harkness was saying. “We can slow it down, but we can’t find a cure. It’s not like anything we’ve seen before.”  
  
There was an air of defeat about the table. Harkness’ words weren’t new to anyone. They had all been hearing them from their own top scientists and not-so-secret organizations for the past three days. Charles could taste the despair in his own mouth. The amount of death that this would cause was beyond comprehension. It wouldn’t mean the end of humanity — not everyone was susceptible — but fifty percent of the population . . . it was impossible to even grasp the scale of it.   
  
“I know it seems hopeless,” Harkness said, “but we’re not beaten yet.” He drew in a breath, bracing himself as if his next words would be difficult for him to say. Charles tried to listen, expecting some pep-talk about how humanity could recover from this, or perhaps some insane, last-ditch idea, doomed to failure but attempted all the same out of desperation. Instead, with his hands clenched on the chair in from of him and a look of pain creasing his usually unfazed face, Harkness stated, “We still have the Doctor.”  
  
The table erupted in a chorus of shock and recognition. Dozens of leaders were talking over each other, with mixtures of hope and alarm and anger, trying to make their questions and protests heard over the din. Charles was wracking his exhaustion-fogged brain, trying to remember how he knew that title . . . . Oh. _Oh._  Him. Suddenly the fragments of sentences which Charles managed to catch made a lot more sense.  
  
“Why the hell didn’t you — ”  
  
“How can we —”  
  
“. . . nothing but a fairytale!”   
  
“ _Quiet!_ ”   
  
The room fell silent.   
  
“Thank you,” said Harkness, in quieter (but still strained) tones. “Let me explain. The Doctor, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is one of Earth’s best defenses. He’s an alien, and a time traveler, and a genius.” Harkness swallowed, and something shifted in his expression. His next words were as cold and harsh and uncompromising as steel. “He is not a weapon or a tool or a soldier. He is a  _person_  — and he might just be able to help us.”  
  
“Wait a moment,” said Vice-President Johnson, leaning forward. The president himself was in an undisclosed location, having contracted the plague the night before. “I’ve heard of the Doctor. Wasn’t he involved with President Winters’ assassination?”  
  
A murmur of agreement went around the table.  
  
“He was there,” Harkness conceded, his jaw tightening. “So was I. That doesn’t make either of us responsible.”  
  
“But you said he’s not human — how can we trust that he has Earth’s interests in mind?” asked the French president, her voice perfectly reasonable and her face composed. To look at her, no one would suspect that her husband was in his last few hours of life. Only the slight thickening of her accent betrayed the strain she was under.  
  
“He’s earned our trust a thousand times over,” snapped Harkness, with what Charles thought was unwarranted anger. After all, the Doctor was active mainly in Britain, and even there he was known primarily as an urban myth among UNIT recruits.   
  
“Besides that, I don’t see that we have much of a choice,” stated General Bricker — temporary head of UNIT, promoted after the original commander fell in the first wave of the plague. “Much as I hate to admit it, the Doctor is the only option we have left. I assume, Captain Harkness, that you have some way of contacting him?”  
  
“Yes. I didn’t want to attempt it before because there are certain . . . complications involved which I’m not at liberty to explain, but I think that the situation is dire enough to warrant the risk.”  
  
“Yes, I think it is,” agreed the French president dryly. “Unless there are any objections?”  
  
There was another rumble around the table, but no one spoke out. Everyone here was terrified, grief-ridden, and exhausted — they were not going to refuse any token of hope offered them. If there was a way to stop this plague, or even to weaken it, they wouldn’t give a damn if it came from the devil himself.  
  
“Alright then,” said Harkness. Strangely enough, there was no trace of enthusiasm or triumph in his manner — only grim determination, and something like resignation. “I’ll need Torchwood’s equipment, and so will he, so I’ll —”  
  
“Fly back to Wales, with Anderson,” said Vice-President Johnson.  
  
“What?” asked Harkness, looking startled.   
  
“What?” echoed Charles, in slightly higher-pitched tones, jerking himself upright.   
  
“This man is going to hold the fate of the planet is his hands; I want some of my people to be there when he does,” stated Johnson firmly. “Dr. Anderson will fly with you to Torchwood, with one of his scientists. You can brief them on the way.”  
  
“And me,” interjected Bricker. “All due respect, Mr. Vice-President, but this lies within UNIT jurisdiction.”  
  
“Very well,” Johnson agreed, while Charles sputtered. “If that’s not a problem for you, Captain Harkness?” He fixed the captain with a hard stare, one that said quite clearly  _‘I am the vice-president, soon to be president of the United States, and I am more than capable of making your life a living hell.’_  Harkness opened his mouth as if to protest, met his gaze, and closed it again. After a moment, he relented.  
  
“Not a problem at all, sir,” he said, with a smile which was all teeth and no warmth.  
  
“Excellent. Dr. Anderson?”  
  
Charles wanted desperately to protest, to say that he was just a scientist, he had only taken the administrative job because it came with a nice office and a pay raise; he was never supposed to be actually in  _charge_  of anything; it was just an unfortunate coincidence that all his military, political higher-ups had fallen victim to the plague —  
  
He met Vice-President Johnson’s eyes, and swallowed hard.  
  
“I’ll be glad to go, sir.”  
  
~~~  
  
Charles shifted nervously in his seat. He didn’t like air travel, luxurious and roomy though this particular plane was, and he didn’t like having to sit here waiting for Harkness, particularly when he had General Bricker on one side of him and Dr. Tobias Spencer on the other.  
  
Bricker was intimidating for very obvious reasons. He was a good foot taller than Charles and apparently built of pure muscle. His voice was loud and thunderous, and his face tended to range through several degrees of anger, arrogance, and disdain.   
  
Physically, Spencer was the exact opposite. He was tiny and pale and young, but he was just damned  _creepy_. He was brilliant, though, and completely unflappable, which was why Charles had chosen him for this particular assignment. Also, he was one of the few qualified scientists who weren’t either sick, in quarantine, or with their families.   
  
The hatch slid open, and Charles jumped (his caffeine-infused sleep deprivation had gone right through exhaustion and into jittery, hyper-sensitive alertness). It was Harkness, who stepped onto the plane with grim self-assurance . . . and faltered when he caught sight of Spencer.   
  
“Captain Harkness,” said Charles, standing awkwardly. “I don’t believe you’ve met Dr. Tobias Spencer?” He turned back to Spencer, only to find him already standing. “Dr. Spencer, this is Captain Harkness, head of Torchwood.”  
  
“Good to meet you, Dr. Spencer,” said Harkness, shaking Spencer’s hand firmly  
  
Spencer nodded silently in return, with a polite smile which didn’t quite reach his wide, eerily blank green eyes. Even Harkness seemed a bit disconcerted by Spencer’s gaze, and he eyed the young scientist oddly as he sat down.  
  
“Right,” he said, once they had taken off and the noise had died down to the constant roar of the engines. “I’ll try to keep this brief so we can all get a couple hours’ sleep before we touchdown. We don’t know anything more about the plague than you do. It’s an airborne virus of alien origin. Most of the deaths so far have been people who are already vulnerable, but we’re getting the first reports of otherwise healthy patients succumbing. About half the population is susceptible, with no apparent discretion in—”  
  
“Cut the crap, Harkness,” snapped Bricker. Charles flinched, and Spencer’s eyes flickered to him. “We all know about the plague. This briefing is about the Doctor.”  
  
“You work for UNIT,” said Harkness coldly. “You have his files. From what I’ve seen, they’re fairly complete.”  
  
Bricker bristled, though whether it was at the evasive answer or at the implication that Harkness had been in UNIT’s files, Charles couldn’t be sure.   
  
“How do you plan to contact him?” Bricker demanded, and Charles was interested in the answer as well. From what he knew (which admittedly wasn’t much), the Doctor was constantly on the move through time and space, with no discernable pattern and not even a consistent appearance.   
  
“I plan to walk down the stairs and talk to him.”  
  
“ _What?!_ ” snarled Bricker angrily, while Charles gaped. Even Spencer looked startled, perking up and turning towards Harkness. “You mean to tell me that the Doctor is still  _in Torchwood_?”   
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Why the  _hell_  didn’t you say that at the beginning?!”  
  
“I told you,” said Harkness tensely, springing up and beginning to pace the length of the cabin, which suddenly seemed quite small and claustrophobic. “There were complications which I’m not at liberty to explain.”  
  
“Everyone on this plane has the highest clearance possible,” snapped Bricker, leaping from his own seat. “As the head of UNIT, I  _order_  you to explain to us!”  
  
“Torchwood is not under UNIT command,” Harkness growled, rounding on the other man, eyes burning. “We are beyond the United Nations.”  
  
“ _Torchwood_  is five Welshmen with delusions of grandeur!” retorted Bricker, his face coloring and his voice rising to a roar.   
  
“Torchwood is the reason that the Earth is still here to protect!”  
  
Charles cleared his throat nervously. Three sets of eyes — one stormy blue; another furious grey; the last expressionless green — snapped to him.   
  
“Ah, my apologies, gentlemen, but I believe that, um, maybe this, um, discussion could be, ah, postponed until . . . a later date? See . . .” He swallowed, feeling a cold sweat break out on his forehead. “I’m sure that we are all very, um, tired, and I expect that’s, um, impairing our — our judgment . . . .” He trailed off, wringing his hands nervously. There were a few moments of tense silence.  
  
“He’s right,” said Harkness at last, and Charles sagged with relief. “We’re all exhausted; we’re not thinking straight. I’m sure you’ll get the answers you want when we land. In the meantime, we should try to get some sleep.”  
  
Harkness settled back into his own seat, and Bricker, after one last resentful glare, followed suit.   
  
Charles sat back, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things are a bit timey-wimey, Bricker is confrontational, and Jack has more important things to worry about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (For new readers, the italic quotations near the end are from Damage Control. The first is the Doctor and the second is Jack, as you can probably gather.)

Jack was not sleeping.  
  
It wasn’t as if he  _needed_  to, really, and he probably wouldn’t have been able to anyway.  
  
There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to protect the planet. He had committed all sorts of wrongs which he usually avoided thinking about — he’d cheated, lied, and stolen; murdered, tortured, and sacrificed teammates and children and, at some point, every one of his principles; all in the name of keeping the Earth safe — but when it came to the Doctor, he had hesitated. He had faltered, dithered and debated and hoped against hope for another solution while thousands of people died, only to come to this anyway.  
  
‘Complications,’ he had told what was left of the world’s leaders. Complications like a heartfelt promise made to a man on the brink. Complications like an old, old friend of whom far too much had already been asked. Complications like trust that had been built and broken and rebuilt, hardened in the fires of fear and desperation and suffering; trust which Jack was now going to shatter all over again . . . .  
  
Dr. Spencer was watching him.   
  
Dr. Spencer — proof that the Universe enjoyed fucking with Jack’s head. The last time Jack had seen Tobias Spencer, he had been skeletal and filthy, eyes fever-bright with mad fury as he struggled against his captors, teeth bared, the Master’s blood dripping down his chin. His brilliant, insane plan had gotten him all the way to the bridge of the Valiant — where he was captured, and eventually shot, but not before he took out several key systems and a chunk of the Master’s ear.  
  
Not that he remembered that, now. No one did, except Jack, the Doctor, and the Jones family. The soldiers and the rest of the Valiant’s passengers had been Retconned. Technically speaking, it had never happened. The neat, quiet young man in front of Jack had never lost his fiancée in the first assault of the Toclafane, had never schemed his way onto the Valiant, only to lash out with teeth and nails and insanity when his plans failed.  
  
He was just a scientist. A highly intelligent one, probably, to be working at Area 51, but still just a scientist. It  _was_  a little disconcerting the way he kept staring, though.  
  
“You should sleep,” Jack told him, keeping his voice low so as not to wake Anderson and Bricker.  
  
“I slept last night.”  
  
It was the first time Jack had heard his voice — his proper voice, when it wasn’t raw with grief and fury and hoarse from screaming curses. It was soft, blandly American, and strangely detached, but what startled him most was how  _young_  it was. Jack turned to really look at him, past the carefully blank expression and the impeccably professional outfit which distracted from his actual appearance. God, he couldn’t be more than twenty-five.  
  
“You weren’t on the original research team?” Jack asked. Anyone who had been on the case from the beginning hadn’t slept in seventy-two hours.  
  
“No.”  
  
There was an awkward silence, in which Dr. Spencer continued to make the hairs on the back of Jack’s neck stand on end. Sympathy for his youth and respect for what he had done in another timeline only went so far towards allowing Jack to ignore the increasingly disquieting scrutiny.   
  
“Look,” he said at last. “I get that I’m the most attractive thing on this plane, but do you mind?”  
  
“Sorry.” Dr. Spencer shifted his gaze to the window.  
  
Jack frowned at him for a moment, and made no further progress in figuring out why the hell he had been staring in the first place. Not that he cared, anyway. What did it matter why some unbalanced scientist was fascinated with his ear?  
  
In a few hours, he was going to hurt the Doctor.  
  
~~~  
  
By the time they touched down in Cardiff, Jack was feeling thoroughly sick to his stomach. There were so many things which he didn’t like about this situation — besides the death toll on the human population (already far too high) and his guilt about breaking his promise to the Doctor, the presence of these virtual strangers was violating all sorts of security protocols. Yes, they all had the highest possible clearance, but Torchwood went right through Top Secret and out the other side. More importantly, Torchwood was  _his_ , and he didn't like being told who he could and couldn't keep out of it.  
  
Still, like it or not there was very little Jack could do about it. Torchwood, for all its flash and secrecy, was still a small fish in the international waters. He was just lucky that none of the other nations were insisting on sending representatives — he doubted that they had any to spare.  
  
He was careful not to let his discomfort show as they disembarked — Bricker was an alpha male, and an aggressive one at that; he would go for the throat at the first sign of weakness. Jack would have to make sure that he and the Doctor always had someone else to act as a buffer between them. Any other time he would have been more worried about scraping Bricker’s ego off the floor when the Doctor was done with him, but the Doctor hadn’t interacted with anyone outside Torchwood for months. Jack couldn’t be sure of his reactions.   
  
Speaking of Bricker’s need for confrontation . . . .  
  
“Harkness, a word.”  
  
“Certainly, General,” said Jack, baring his teeth in what Bricker might have taken as a smile, if he was as stupid as he looked. Behind Bricker, Anderson shifted nervously and Spencer quietly withdrew a meter or so.  
  
“I want to make something very clear,” growled Bricker, drawing himself up and obviously trying to look intimidating. If he thought that some trumped up general was going to frighten anyone in Torchwood, then he had no idea what he was dealing with. “I wouldn’t be here unless there was absolutely no other choice. Unlike some of my colleagues, I am of the belief that humanity should be able to solve its own problems, without extraterrestrial assistance. I do not like or encourage this planet’s dependence on the Doctor.”  
  
He said the Doctor’s name with a disdainful sneer, and Jack had to use every ounce of self-control to keep from punching it off his face.   
  
“I agree completely,” he said instead. Bricker deflated slightly, surprised, and then Jack continued, his voice growing more acerbic with every word. “It is absolutely shameful that we can’t protect our own planet. It’s even worse that we act as though it’s our right to have the Doctor come running whenever we call him, as if he owes us anything at all, when in reality he’d have every right to tell us to go fuck ourselves. Worst of all is that there are still bastards like you, who are so fucking stupid that you still look down on him just because he didn’t have the misfortune of being born on this godforsaken rock of a planet!”  
  
He spun around and began to stride toward the waiting SUV before Bricker had a chance to respond.  
  
~~~  
  
Ianto was waiting for them at the Tourist Information Centre. He politely ushered them into the lift, and on the way down informed Jack softly,  
  
“The Doctor is still sleeping. We thought it was best if you wake him.”  
  
Jack nodded in acknowledgement, unable to speak around the sudden lump in his throat. He had called ahead to inform his team of the change of plans, and had been met with varying levels of doubt and resistance. They had all bonded with the Doctor after he had taken up semi-permanent residence in Torchwood, and none of them were happy about putting so much responsibility on him when he was still so obviously fragile.   
  
Gwen was doubtful that the Doctor was even capable of the sort of miracle that Jack was going to ask of him — she, more than any of them, knew the Doctor only as the broken man who puttered in the archives and cried out in his sleep. Owen, who had the survival instincts to see a Time Lord for the powerful being it was, had been quick to believe the Doctor  _could_  do it, but was one of the most reluctant to say that he  _should_. To everyone’s surprise and Jack’s eternal amusement, the two had become quite close over the past few months, in the strange, unspoken way that their personalities necessitated.   
  
They had all agreed in the end, though. There was no other option. Half the population of Earth was at stake. One man for three billion lives? They had to do it, no matter how much it hurt.  
  
They didn’t have to like it, though, as Jack was forcibly reminded as he stepped into the Hub. Gwen and Toshiko had been talking, and fell silent when they entered, Gwen looking worried and Tosh, guilty. Owen paused to glare at them, then continued in pointed silence towards the autopsy room.   
  
“Don’t mind him,” said Gwen with a tired smile as she approached. She’d been crying, though it was hard to know about what — it could have been Rhys, who had contracted the plague early that morning, or her mother, who was in her last hours of life, or the imminent pain of the Doctor, for whom she showed an almost maternal affection . . . . “Owen doesn’t play well with others.”  
  
“Gentlemen, Agent Gwen Cooper,” said Jack, herding them towards her. “You can get acquainted while I brief the Doctor.” He gave Gwen a look which he hoped communicated his intent —  _keep them occupied; I don’t want to be interrupted_  — and slipped away before anyone could protest.  
  
Toshiko was watching from her desk, but she quickly turned away and pretended to be busy as he mounted the stairs, and a movement in the archway said that Owen was doing the same. He tried to steel himself as he approached the couch, but all the resolve in the world couldn’t keep his heart from melting at the sight in front of him.  
  
The Doctor was curled on his side, no jacket, no tie, mismatched socks. He looked ordinary and young and, just for a moment, peaceful . . . and then he shuddered, twitched, let out a whimper as his face creased with pain. The pathetic sound pierced Jack like a knife, a harsh reminder that this man had already been hurt far too often. He drew in a breath, gritted his teeth, and reached for his shoulder.  
  
Brown eyes flew open, and Jack’s wrist was suddenly caught in an iron grip.   
  
“Doctor, it’s me,” he said, calmly and evenly, trying to soothe the panic which he had come to anticipate. “It’s alright; you were dreaming.”  
  
The Doctor blinked, loosening his grip. The fog of sleep and terror was fading quickly, and a moment later he released Jack’s arm and sat up, scrubbing his hands over his face.  
  
“Sorry,” he muttered, as he always did, despite all their reassurances that nobody blamed him for his nightmares. The knife in Jack’s heart twisted.  
  
“It’s okay,” he said, even though the Doctor never believed him.   
  
“Mm . . .” The Doctor tensed suddenly, the last vestiges of slumber evaporating in an instant. His suddenly alert eyes flickered over Jack, undoubtedly taking in the tension in his jaw and the pain in his eyes, then over his shoulder at the Hub’s guests, who were watching them with varying degrees of subtlety. “But something isn’t,” he concluded, eyes going wide. “Something’s wrong . . .” His gaze darted to Tosh, then Gwen and Ianto, and finally towards the autopsy room, from which Owen’s muttered swearing could be heard. “. . . but everyone’s okay,” he said with a relieved sigh, relaxing. “Alright, then, I’ll just keep myself out of the way.”   
  
He went to stand, to flee into the archives as he always did when a particularly urgent case came up. Whether consciously or otherwise, the Doctor had succeeded in completely shutting out any and all Torchwood business which could possibly tempt him to get involved. He accomplished this by spending most working hours either in the TARDIS or in Torchwood’s archives, sorting through the hundreds of pieces of alien junk which they had accumulated over the years. It kept him out of harm’s way, for the most part, and some of the things he identified were actually helpful, so everyone was happy to leave him to it — until today.   
  
Jack caught his arm.  
  
“Doctor, we need your help.”  
  
“. . . Jack?”   
  
Jack forced himself to meet his eyes, dark and questioning and edged with a barely restrained flurry of fear and betrayal and pain.   
  
“Jack . . . you  _promised_.” The Doctor’s voice cracked, and Jack could swear he could feel his heart doing to same.  
  
“I know, and I’m sorry, but we’re out of options.” Normally in this sort of situation he would be cold and practical and commanding, but this was  _the Doctor_ , and he was hurting him, and it was so, so wrong. He couldn’t keep the pleading out of his voice. “There’s a virus, alien origin; we can’t find a cure. It started three days ago and it’s spreading fast; it’ll wipe out half the planet in two weeks — we’ve tried everything.”  
  
“Everything except me,” said the Doctor softly, his anguished eyes sliding away and going distant. Abruptly he shook himself, drew a hand over his face, and gave a hysterical giggle. “‘Help me, Obi-Wan; you’re my only hope!’” he quoted, the laughter bubbling thickly from the back of his throat like blood from a wound.   
  
“Doctor —”  _I’m sorry_.  
  
“I know, I know,” the Doctor sighed, pulling on his jacket. He was already retreating behind his emotional walls, pulling farther into himself than he had in months. Jack could see a dozen interlocking defenses sliding into place behind his eyes, forming an impenetrable barrier through which no one could hear him scream. “Got to hold it together until the day is saved. No rest for the weary, and all that.”  
  
Jack winced at the painfully apt quotation.   
  
 _“. . . I don’t want to be strong anymore!”_  
  
“Doc — I never wanted — you know I meant what I —”  
  
 _“You don’t have to be.”_  
  
“Oh, I know you meant it, Captain,” said the Doctor, his voice light and his eyes terrifyingly blank. “Everyone does, at the time. You might want to invite your friends up,” he added, nodding towards Bricker and the others. He fished the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and twirled it between his fingers, his lips twisting into an empty smile. “The Doctor is in.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a microscope meets a tragic but meaningful end, the Doctor and Spencer disconcert each other, and Charles is woefully out of place.

“Well, it’s definitely genetically engineered,” the Doctor stated from where he stood bent over something which had once been a microscope, but was now a tangled mess of wires and spare parts, as most devices became if they were left in the Doctor’s hands for any length of time. “The fundamental DNA type is from Regulus III, which means it’s not weaponised . . .”   
  
“Why does that mean it’s not weaponised?” asked Jack, while Gwen tried to gage the Doctor’s reaction to all this. He was back in his full ensemble, converse on his feet, brainy specs on his face, sonic screwdriver in his hand — and nothing at all in his eyes.   
  
“Regulus III is known for its research and Universities; it’s a highly advanced society —”  
  
“Advanced beyond such barbaric things as war, I suppose?” said Bricker, mockingly — Gwen had known him for ten minutes and he was already making her blood pressure rise.   
  
“No,” said the Doctor coldly, drawing himself up to his full height and tucking away his glasses. Something did glint in his eyes then, something that Gwen hadn’t seen since the first time she met him; a flash of steel and fire. “I was  _going_  to say that if the inhabitants of Regulus III set about releasing a plague on Earth, they would wipe out the whole planet in two hours, not half of it in two weeks.”  
  
“So — so they don’t want to wipe us out,” said Dr. Anderson, fiddling nervously with his tie. The poor man was obviously a long way out of his depth, Area 51 or no. Gwen would have felt sorry for him if she had any emotional energy to spare. “Could it have been an accident? Perhaps they were doing some sort of research, and the virus mutated — they might not even realize. If we could contact them, maybe they could synthesize a cure!”  
  
“Yeah, that’s a nice thought, Mr . . . ?”  
  
“Um, Anderson. Dr. Charles Anderson.”  
  
“Well, Charlie-boy,” said the Doctor with a bounce which drew Gwen’s attention to the coiled energy in his lanky frame. “It’s not a bad idea, but I’m afraid that it’s not that simple.”  
  
“Course it’s not,” snorted Owen from where he was sulking with his arms crossed.   
  
“Problem is, it’s not weaponised, but it’s still engineered,” continued the Doctor, ignoring Owen completely. That was a change; he was usually ready with a witty rejoinder to Owen’s sarcasm. Their banter had become an odd but familiar feature of daily life in the Hub, Owen’s often lewd and profane barbs contrasting with the Doctor’s occasionally acidic but always squeaky clean retorts. Now, though, he didn’t even glance his direction, all his focus on the case — or maybe (and there was a far more worrying thought) on keeping his undoubtedly turbulent emotions under control. “You said this started three days ago — how many deaths so far?”  
  
“Relatively speaking, not many,” said Jack. He was doing almost as well as the Doctor at hiding his inner turmoil — almost. His voice was steady and his face composed, but Gwen could see the tension in his posture and the lines of stress and pain around his eyes. It was killing him to do this to the Doctor, but he didn’t have a choice any more than the rest of them did. “Millions have been infected, but only the people who were already vulnerable have died.”  
  
“How many, Jack?” asked the Doctor, voice flat and tired, eyes still empty. Jack hesitated, and it was Bricker who answered, harshly and with something like accusation in his tone. Gwen hated him more every second.  
  
“Over six hundred thousand, and more are dying by the minute.”  
  
The Doctor’s mask faltered for a moment, just a hairline crack — Gwen caught a glimpse of  _guilt horror sorrow **pain**_  — and then his blank veneer was back in place.  
  
“Well, then, we’d better get started.”  
  
He spun into action, snatching up various chemicals and devices and issuing instructions.  
  
“Dr. Anderson, hold these, please; Owen, I need you to go down to the archives; there’s a purple box filed under ‘K’ — actually, take Jack with you; it’s on the top shelf. Careful not to touch the mauve thing next to it! You —” He stopped in front of Bricker, in his space and frowning at him as if he was an anomalous piece of data. “Sorry, who are you?”  
  
“General James Bricker,” the broader man said gruffly, pointedly not saluting. “Head of UNIT.”  
  
“Interim,” Gwen couldn’t resist adding, earning herself a thunderous glare from Bricker, and, even more satisfyingly, a twitch of the Doctor’s lips.  
  
“Yes, well, unless you have advanced knowledge in genetic engineering then I’m afraid I’ll need you out of the way.” He slipped past them without another word, and despite the direness of the situation, Gwen had to suppress a smirk at the affronted look on the aggressive general’s face. “Dr. Anderson, you’re familiar with the process of DNA amplification? Excellent! If you could just — don’t touch that!”  
  
The Doctor suddenly shot across the room, catching the wrist of Dr. Anderson’s colleague as he reached for the device-which-was-formerly-a-microscope. Gwen had nearly forgotten about the young man, he was so quiet. The Doctor evidently hadn’t noticed him at all, and was now staring at him in shock. The scientist was staring back with equal surprise and alarm. Young green eyes met ancient brown ones, both pairs wide with something verging on horror.  
  
“Doc, is this the — oh.” Jack stopped in his tracks at the top of the stairs, a violet box in hand, taking in the scene in front of him. “Right, I guess I should have mentioned that . . .”  
  
“You think?” the Doctor snarled, releasing the young man’s arm as he rounded on Jack with such sudden, spine-tingling fury that the captain actually took a step back. Anderson swallowed a yelp, Bricker’s hand jerked compulsively towards his gun, and the young man slid back a few steps, looking shaken. The rage drained out of the Doctor as quickly as it had come.   
  
“Sorry,” he said, visibly forcing himself to relax. “Sorry. I’m fine. Just startled me, that’s all.”  
  
“You sure?” asked Jack cautiously, at the same time as Bricker snarled,  
  
“What did?!”   
  
Jack gritted his teeth, but seemed to realize that they weren’t going to accomplish anything until they got Bricker out of the way.  
  
“Gwen, would you mind showing General Bricker to the conference room? I’ll be up in a few minutes to answer his questions and discuss distribution of the cure.”  
  
“Of course. General Bricker?” said Gwen, with her sweetest smile.   
  
Bricker shot one more suspicious glare at Jack, who met his gaze without flinching, and at the Doctor, who ignored him, before following reluctantly.   
  
~~~  
  
“You  _sure_  you’re alright?” Harkness questioned as soon as Bricker was out earshot.   
  
“Yes, I’m sure,” the Doctor replied with an impatient, dismissive gesture. He snatched the box from Harkness’ hands and flipped it open, pulling out various pieces of alien equipment as he said over his shoulder, “What about you, Dr. Spencer? Didn’t hurt you, did I?”  
  
“No, sir,” said Spencer. He paused, a small frown marring his face. “But no one’s told you my name.”  
  
“Oh, I have very good hearing,” said the Doctor. Charles considered pointing out that that wasn’t really an explanation at all, but thought better of it.  
  
Harkness eyed the Doctor for another moment, obviously unconvinced of his wellbeing.  
  
“ _Go_ , Jack.”  
  
He went.  
  
“Owen,” said the Doctor a minute later, addressing the small, bad-tempered man who had been lurking around ever since they arrived. “I need you to go to the TARDIS. Here.” He tossed the Torchwood agent an ordinary-looking Yale key. “Go to the laboratory; bring me everything you find on the nearest counter. I’ve asked her to cooperate, but try to be polite.”  
  
‘Owen’ departed with a grumble.  
  
“Dr. Anderson, DNA amplification.”  
  
“Of course, sir,” Charles said, jerking into action.   
  
“Don’t call me sir,” said the Doctor absently, as he frowned at the purple box.   
  
“Yes, s — Doctor. Sorry.” Charles set to work, trying to keep his eyes on his task. He wasn’t doing a very good job of it, though. It had only just sunk in that the Doctor was really, truly alien. Not that Charles was completely unfamiliar with extraterrestrial life, but he didn’t usually have actual contact with living, talking aliens. That was more the territory of field agents. It was one thing to examine sample tissues and know that they came from an alien — it was another thing entirely to meet one, to feel the crackle of power when he lashed out and to hear him curse in some strange, dissonant language as he dropped something on his foot.  
  
“You can stop looking at me like that,” said the Doctor, without looking up from his own work. Charles jumped guiltily, and realized that he’d been eying the back of the man’s head for the past few minutes. “I’m not going to sprout tentacles or anything, I promise.”  
  
“Sorry,” said Charles, feeling his face heat.   
  
“Quite alright. But — wait, hang on.” The Doctor spun around and eyed him critically. Charles took an automatic step back, swallowing hard. “You work for Area 51; I can’t be the first alien you’ve met.”   
  
“I — I’m a scientist. I work in the lab.”  
  
“So does Toby here, but he seems to be taking all this remarkably well,” the Doctor pointed out, jerking his head towards Spencer as he turned back to his task.  
  
“Please don’t call me Toby. And I interact with aliens on a daily basis, because I also work in interrogation. Not like that,” Spencer added flatly, when the Doctor shot him a dark, evaluating look. “I’m an empath.”   
  
“Human lie detector,” stated the Doctor knowingly, while Charles sputtered. He hadn’t known that. Shouldn’t he have known that? Nobody ever told him anything.   
  
“Precisely.”  
  
“You sure you’re alright?” questioned the Doctor, unconsciously echoing Harkness’ words even as he swirled a mixture with one hand and adjusted his microscope with the other. “I touched you earlier, and I wasn’t shielded.”  
  
“I have my own shields.”   
  
“Yes, I expect you do.” The look which the Doctor gave Spencer was calculating and unfathomable. The gaze with which the young scientist responded was steady and opaque.   
  
Charles swallowed, wiped his sweaty hands on his pants, and tried to ignore the feeling that he was in way over his head.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack delegates to Ianto, the Doctor delegates to Jack, and History Which Never Was repeats itself.

Jack shook himself free of Bricker as quickly as he could, fobbing him off with stubbornly repeated (false) assertions of confidentiality and (true) reminders of the need to work together to replicate and distribute the cure. Thankfully, however obnoxious and xenophobic Bricker was, he honestly did believe in putting the good of the human race above all else, including his own ego. Jack had left him to work with Ianto on procuring the necessary location, equipment, and personnel.  
  
He’d make it up to Ianto later. First, he had to make sure that half the human race didn’t die out, and that the Doctor was alright. That the Doctor wouldn’t hate him for this was too much to hope for, but as long as he was alive and healthy — as long as he hated Jack and not himself —  
  
Jack collided with someone leaving the autopsy room. It was Anderson, who babbled apologies as he stepped past.   
  
“I thought Owen was fetching and carrying for you,” Jack commented, leaning over the railing. The angle gave him a very good view of the top of the Doctor’s head, but made it difficult to discern his expression.   
  
“He is,” replied the Doctor, not glancing up. “I sent Dr. Anderson to get some rest. The man’s exhausted.”  
  
Jack considered pointing out that international crises tended to take precedent over sleep, but bit his tongue. The Doctor knew better than anyone the toll which disaster took on a person, and snapping at him would be neither useful nor fair. If he had sent Anderson away it was because he didn’t need him — and why should he, with Owen as his gofer and Spencer as his lab assistant?  
  
Jack’s thoughts were interrupted when a dull buzzing undercut the sharper sound of the sonic screwdriver. Both he and the Doctor turned to look at Spencer, who extracted a cell phone from his pocket and glanced at the caller ID.   
  
“I have to take this,” he stated, and slipped past Jack with the swiftness and silence of a ghost.   
  
Jack would have gone after him — they were trying to synthesize a cure for a worldwide plague, goddammit; this was not the time to worry about one’s social life — but the Doctor’s sharp “don’t” stopped him.   
  
“Who’s he talking to?” asked Jack, assuming that, as usual, the Time Lord knew something he didn’t. The Doctor didn’t answer for a moment, the pause filled with the clink of glass and the bubbling of liquids. To anyone else it may have looked like he was distracted by his work, but Jack knew that he was engineering an important-looking task so that he wouldn’t have to look at him when he answered.  
  
“His fiancée.”   
  
Jack sucked in a breath.   
  
“Doctor, I’m sorry.” He had been planning to save the mending of bridges for after the emergency had passed, but it was suddenly imperative that he apologized for this small offence, the least of his wrongs but one that had come at the worst possible moment. He descended the stairs slowly as he spoke, giving the Doctor the chance to warn him off if he didn’t want his presence or his apology. “I know I should have warned you — hell, it gave me a bit of a shock when I first caught sight of him. I wasn’t thinking.”  
  
Other than a slight tensing of his shoulders which showed that he was aware of the movement, the Doctor gave no response. He was silent, neither condemning nor absolving. Jack sighed, resigning himself to his new place in the chilly and inscrutable depths of the Doctor’s resentment. He deserved it, after all.   
  
“Do you need anything?” he questioned tiredly, once it became obvious that no reply was forthcoming.   
  
“Yes, actually,” the Doctor said, still not turning to face him. “I need you to keep an eye on Dr. Spencer.”   
  
“I already am, and he seems alright. A bit strange, but he hasn’t sent up any red flags.”  
  
“No, he wouldn’t have,” agreed the Doctor, which might have sounded reassuring but for the darkly sardonic note in his voice. “He’s a disassociated empath.”  
  
“ _What?_ ” Jack sputtered, completely thrown, a new jolt of adrenaline shooting through his already frayed system.   
  
“He hasn’t got the filters that healthy empaths do, so he completely blocks out all emotional signals —”  
  
“— including his own,” Jack finished. “Yeah, I know what a disassociated empath is.” In the fifty-first century, it was considered a mental illness, and a dangerous one. Disassociated empaths weren’t  _really_  emotionless — they just repressed and repressed and repressed until they couldn’t any more, and then . . . well, things tended to get messy. “You sure?”  
  
“I touched him with my shields down. If he weren’t disassociated, he’d have done a lot more than just freeze up for a few seconds.”  
  
“Right . . .” said Jack uneasily, trying not to picture the ramifications of someone ending up in the Doctor’s head without warning. It wasn’t even safe for the Doctor in there; let alone some twenty-some-year-old empath. “Wait, how does he have a fiancée? Unless she’s a sociopath or something —”   
  
“I don’t think he’s fully disconnected yet,” said the Doctor, glancing over his shoulder at the archway through which Spencer had disappeared. “She’s probably his last link to the rest of humanity. The only person he allows himself to feel emotion around.”  
  
“So when she died . . .”  
  
“Exactly.”  
  
“Damn,” Jack sighed. “Alright, but look, he’s not our problem. Once this is all sorted out we’ll ship him back to Area 51 and they’ll deal with him, so as long as his fiancée doesn’t drop dead in the next few days . . . .”   
  
The Doctor cleared his throat.  
  
“Yeah, about that -- she’s got the plague.”  
  
Jack closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out through his nose. He wondered, not for the first time, what it was about the Doctor that made everything go to hell the moment he got involved.  
  
“But you’re working on the cure, right?” said Jack, keeping his voice carefully calm.   
  
“She’s in the final stages; it won’t be ready in time. I’ve got the basic formula, but I’ll need another hour at least to refine it and then I need to run some tests to make sure it won’t have any catastrophic side-effects, and that’s not even factoring in packaging and distribution. Jack —” The Doctor turned. His expression was shuttered and cold and distant, a clinical scientist stating a fact. “She’s going to die.”  
  
“Who is?” asked Owen as he stepped into the autopsy room, carrying a large cardboard box which was overflowing with equipment even more futuristic than the hodgepodge of objects which the Doctor had recovered from the archives.   
  
“Everyone, eventually,” stated the Doctor, snatching the box from Owen’s arms. “ _Very_  eventually, in some cases,” he added.  
  
“Alright, I can take a hint,” said Jack, swallowing the hurt which came less from the rather weak barb and more from the dark, malicious look which accompanied it. “I’m going.”  
  
On the way out, Spencer slipped around him, still silent and blank-faced. His eyes were red.  
  
~~~  
  
The Doctor had overestimated his timeline. An hour after he had chased Jack from the autopsy room he was running the final checks on a newly-synthesized cure, and everyone else in Torchwood was scrambling to set up a distribution centre. Jack was just listening to Ianto work his magic when Owen stuck his head into the conference room.  
  
“Jack, the Doctor says to tell you ‘go time.’”   
  
It took Jack a moment to work out what he meant — but only a moment, and then he was bolting out the door, ignoring Owen’s loud complaint of, “Am I the only one who has no fucking clue what’s going on?”  
  
Jack skidded to a halt in the archway.  
  
“Archives,” stated the Doctor flatly, without looking around.  
  
“Thanks,” said Jack, and took off again, slowing as he reached the entrance to the archives. Carefully, he eased the door open and stepped inside, every nerve taut.  
  
The oppressive atmosphere of misery in the room was depressingly familiar, though he hadn’t felt it as often in the past few weeks. It was different today, however — no muffled sobbing echoed in the cavernous space, no whimpers of desperately suppressed pain. Instead, there was complete and utter silence — but a silence heavy with tension; the silence after the button is pressed but before the bomb drops.  
  
“Dr. Spencer?” he called cautiously, consciously keeping his hands at his sides and ignoring the urge to draw his gun.  
  
“Right here,” came the disconcertingly mild reply from somewhere in the back of the room.  
  
Jack moved forward warily, peering around shelves as he went. He finally located Spencer, a tiny, pale figure sitting in the far corner, cell phone cradled in his lap, eyes red-rimmed but blank as he stared unseeingly ahead.  
  
“Dr. Spencer . . .” he began, and then realized that he had no idea what to say. The Doctor would have apologized with deeply sincere but ultimately useless words, assured Spencer that life went on and it got better (all evidence aside), that there was still good to be done and she wouldn’t have wanted him to give up . . . but none of that was what Spencer needed to hear.  
  
Jack dropped into a crouch in front of the young, hurt, possibly insane empath.  
  
“We are going to  _end_  whoever did this.”   
  
Spencer’s eyes snapped to his, his forehead creasing in a small frown.  
  
“I know you’ve only just met him,” Jack continued, low and solemn and hard as steel, “but I’ve known the Doctor for a long, long time. He is the last person in the Universe who you want to piss off, and the fasted way to do that is to threaten the Earth. Whoever engineered this plague will be getting off lucky if someone shoots them.”  
  
“Yes,” Spencer agreed, flashing his teeth in something that was a grin in the same way that biting off someone’s ear was a kiss. “They will.”   
  
~~~  
  
Jack emerged from the archives in time to hear the Doctor’s triumphant shout.  
  
“It’s ready?” he asked, jogging over to the autopsy room.   
  
“Yep,” the Doctor confirmed, popping the P and holding up a syringe of clear liquid. “One injection of this to every victim, and goodbye plague. No side-effects, either — well, some people may get a bit of a rash, but nothing serious.”  
  
“You made that in ninety minutes. That’s fucking insane,” stated Owen, though he sounded more annoyed than surprised.  
  
“We-ell, I know I say that I’m a doctor of everything, and I am, but genetic engineering is a specialty of mine,” said the Doctor, as if synthesizing a cure for a plague in an hour and a half was akin to producing a perfect soufflé. “‘If you know both yourself and your enemy,’ and all that. Fascinating man, Sun Tzu — though I swear he was taking notes during our conversation. Some of chapter three seemed awfully familiar . . .”  
  
“The others are setting up a distribution center,” said Jack, choosing not to comment on the Doctor’s (possibly legitimate) belief that parts of  _The Art of War_ were plagiarized from a conversation he had with a long-dead Chinese general. “The only problem will be how fast we can replicate the cure.”  
  
“It won’t be a problem,” said the Doctor. His clipped, chilly tone made Jack flinch, but the Doctor didn’t notice, too busy pointedly not looking at him. “We’ll just use the TARDIS. She has appliances which can churn it out as fast as you can ship it.”  
  
“And that’s alright?” questioned Jack, just to be sure. He wasn’t  _really_  worried that the Doctor would overlook possibly Universe-ending consequences, but . . . alright, he was, just a little. “It won’t tear the fabric of Time or anything?”  
  
“Not anymore than Torchwood usually does,” the Doctor replied shortly.  
  
“Funnily enough, that’s not nearly as reassuring as you probably think it is,” said Jack, some of his irritation leaking into his tone despite himself. He understood that he had hurt the Doctor, and he felt horrible, but they had a job to do.  
  
“Jack,” said the Doctor, an edge in his voice. “We are sitting on top of a spatial-temporal rift, the largest collection of anachronistic artifacts I have ever seen, and  _you_. Comparatively speaking, using a replicator which won’t be invented for fifty years is as safe as houses. Time Lord, Captain. I know what I’m doing.”  
  
“Right. Good.” He drew in a breath, forced himself to relax. “You’ve done great, Doc. Thank you.” He was actually slightly relieved. Hearing that old arrogance in the Doctor’s voice was comforting after so long battling his doubt and self-loathing. Maybe, just maybe this whole mess would be good for the Time Lord after all.  
  
Then again . . . .  
  
The Doctor didn’t reply to Jack’s thanks, instead glancing over Jack’s shoulder. Jack followed his gaze to where Spencer was sitting hunched on the sofa, his face in his hands, his shoulders shuddering at irregular intervals. Jack turned back to the Doctor, opening his mouth to offer some word of reassurance, but his dark eyes were shuttered and blank once more, the tension in his jaw warning against any attempt at comfort.   
  
The words were as clear in his expression as if he had shouted them:  _I didn’t do well enough_.  
  
Jack cursed silently.  
  
They had a ways to go yet.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Owen has sore feet, Bricker has courage but not intelligence, and the Doctor has enough titles to win any pissing match, thank you very much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Apologies for my biological babble, which is probably just as bad as my techno variety.)
> 
> Special thanks to my dad, with whom I had a very interesting, in depth, and only slightly disturbing conversation about the most effective methods for unleashing an alien plague upon the Earth.

About forty-five minutes after the Doctor had whipped up a miracle cure in no time flat (Owen would never tell him to his face, but that man was fucking brilliant), Owen was resting his feet for the first time in over two hours and listening to the Doctor elaborate on what he called ‘the hard part’ — catching the bastards who engineered the virus in the first place. The air was thick with tension: Bricker was glaring at Jack and the Doctor in turn; Jack was alternating between glaring back and staring longingly at the side of the Doctor’s head; the Doctor was pretending that neither of them existed; everyone else kept shooting resentful glances at a very nervous Anderson, who had gotten a break by virtue of being useless; and to top it all off, the whole room was put on edge by Spencer’s eerily silent presence.   
  
“As plagues go, it’s a bit rubbish, really,” the Doctor was saying, rubbing the back of his neck and studiously ignoring the vein which was pulsing in Bricker’s forehead. “I mean, it’s not much worse than the Black Death, and that was naturally occurring.” He gestured elaborately as he continued to lecture and his voice remained light and academic, the very picture of an enthusiastic scientist — but his eyes were still carefully blank, and Owen couldn’t help but wonder what it was he was so desperate to hide.  
  
“You said that fifty percent of the population is susceptible, but that’s not strictly accurate — there’s two strains mixed in with the sample, as if whoever released it wasn’t sure which would work better and decided to hedge their bets. One of them acts as a vaccine — it’s too weak to cause noticeable symptoms, but it teaches your immune system how to fight it off. If you’re exposed to the weaker strain first, the stronger one won’t hurt you.”  
  
“Hang on,” protested Owen sharply. “I went over those RNA sequences ten times! There weren’t two different strains.”  
  
“The difference wasn’t in the nucleotides; I doubt your equipment could have picked it up,” said the Doctor with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But that’s not the only clue. The pathogen wasn’t engineered from scratch; it’s a modification on a common Regulan flu virus. That’s one of the reasons I could create a cure so easily. Where was it released?” he asked abruptly. He directed the question at Ianto, and Owen knew better than to think it was anything other than an intentional snub of Jack. Honestly, when those two weren’t fawning over each other like newlyweds they were fighting with all the passive-aggressiveness of an old married couple.  
  
“New York City, the middle of Manhattan,” answered Ianto.  
  
“Ah, see?” said the Doctor, as if that sealed some sort of judgment. “This wasn’t well thought out at all.”  
  
“New York seems like a pretty good release point to me,” said Gwen. “It’s a major population centre, tourists from all over the world, lots of travel to a fro . . . .”  
  
“Yes, but it’s also the first place you’d expect it. Tell me, how long did it take you to realize there was an epidemic?”  
  
This time it was Anderson who spoke up, timidly, his suit and hair still rumpled from his nap.   
  
“Only a few hours. One of the Mayor’s aids started coughing up blood; and when no one could identify the cause . . .”  
  
“ _Exactly!_ ” exclaimed the Doctor, banging his hand on the table and making them all jump. “A biological attack in the middle of New York City, in this decade? There’s no way people won’t notice, unless you have an incredibly long incubation period. It would be better to release the virus into the upper atmosphere, if you have the volume and potency for that — or if you don’t, choose a country with worse healthcare and less paranoia. The longer it takes people to catch on, the more damage is done.”  
  
“I expect you would know, wouldn’t you, Doctor?” Bricker asked sneeringly.  
  
Everything froze. No one seemed to breathe as they watched the Doctor, who was sitting stiff and straight in his chair, his face white as a sheet.  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“Don’t you?” said Bricker, his lip curling maliciously. “I was under the impression that you were quite the expert on killing planets.”  
  
The tension which filled the room snapped.  
  
Gwen’s cry of “How  _dare_  you!” nearly drowned out Tosh’s shocked gasp, and they were both overpowered by the clatter as Jack surged to his feet, white with fury, sending his chair crashing to the floor. Owen tasted blood through his clenched teeth, and realized that his had bitten his cheek. He suddenly wanted to shove Ianto, who had positioned himself between Jack and Bricker, out of the way and take a swing at the bastard himself. That son of a bitch, did he think he just walk into  _their_  agency and start having a go at someone under  _their_  protection? Well he had another thing coming, that fucking —  
  
“ _Stop!_ ”   
  
The Doctor’s voice broke through the confusion like a gunshot, and everyone froze for an instant, before turning to look at him. He was on his feet, arms braced on the table, eyes burning. The room now crackled with a different kind of tension, the air charged with the alien power radiating from a man who only instants ago had looked like a slightly eccentric English teacher.   
  
“Jack, sit  _down_ ,” the Doctor ordered, and it was nearly a growl. Jack complied immediately, looking abashed, and Ianto followed suit. Owen sank back into his own chair, which he had half risen from, feeling himself flush with inexplicable shame.   
  
The Doctor turned his scorching gaze on Bricker, who was suddenly alone at the end of the table, both Spencer and Anderson having moved their chairs away from his. Anderson looked terrified, and Spencer was watching carefully, an odd glint in his eyes.  
  
“As for your question, General Bricker,” said the Doctor, each word carefully controlled. “Yes, I do know, from first-hand experience,  _exactly_  what interstellar warfare looks like — and this is not it. So if we could remain on topic, please . . . .” He relaxed with startling suddenness, all tension draining out of him as collapsed back into his chair in a gangly heap of pinstriped limbs. Owen didn’t miss the way that his new position kept his hands out of sight under the table. If they were trembling, it didn’t show in his voice. “I highly doubt that this is any sort of organized operation. This is more something I’d expect to see from a student, and a bad one at that.”  
  
“You’re saying we’re dealing with a kid,” Gwen translated, a touch of incredulity in her tone.   
  
“Yep,” the Doctor confirmed. “An angry, unstable one, who thinks that he’s a lot cleverer than he is. Which means he should be fairly easy to track. So!” He leapt up again, this time moving towards the door and pulling out his sonic screwdriver. “Allons-y!” he called over his shoulder, and began bounding down the stairs.  
  
Everyone else scrambled to follow him. When they all made it down the stairs the Doctor was already bent over Tosh’s computer, his (incredibly pointless) fake glasses on his face as he tapped away at the keyboard.   
  
“This won’t be any help,” he said, spinning around and pulling off his glasses. “I’ll need to use the TARDIS. Owen, with me, please. The rest of you, go . . . monitor stuff, or something.”  
  
They all moved to obey — Owen with a half-hearted grumble and Jack with marked reluctance — but then a gruff bark made them all turn back incredulously.   
  
“Doctor!”  
  
It was Bricker. The man had balls, at least — ones that were bigger than his brain, apparently.   
  
The Doctor sighed and slowed down, muttering something under his breath. Owen couldn’t quite make it out, but he was willing to bet that it was something along the lines of ‘I don’t have time for this shit.’ Nevertheless, the Doctor had a smile on his face when he turned around — the wide, confident, chilling smile which a gunslinger would give a knifeman.   
  
“Yes, General?”  
  
Bricker either didn’t notice the way the Doctor’s patience was fraying, or he chose to ignore it. He drew himself up to his full height and said roughly,  
  
“When the culprit is apprehended, it will be handed over to UNIT.”  
  
“Will he, now?”  
  
“Yes,” replied Bricker, admirably — or stupidly, in Owen’s opinion — unshaken by the brittle, frozen quality which the Doctor’s grin had assumed. “Whatever released this plague has committed crimes against humanity. It is by humanity that it should be brought to justice.”  
  
“That’s not a bad point,” the Doctor conceded, with forced civility, “but you lot haven’t even got the buildings for anything resembling an extraterrestrial legal system, let alone the knowledge. Torchwood has some temporary holding cells, but those wouldn’t be adequate for any sort of long-term, high security imprisonment.   
  
“I know what you call prison facilities,” he added sharply, his smile gone, cutting Bricker off as he opened his mouth. Where before the Doctor’s fury had been hot and fiery, now it felt as if the temperature in the room had dropped about ten degrees. “It’s appalling enough that you get away with keeping humans in there, but if you tried to hold a Regulan in one of those coffins, you’d cause an intergalactic incident.  
  
“ _Who_ ever did this will be brought to justice — by the Shadow Proclamation, in accordance with galactic law. If you have a problem with that, I suggest that you spend little less time building laser canons and a bit more joining the civilized Universe.” With this scathing last, the Doctor turned to continue to the TARDIS, obviously considering the topic closed.   
  
Bricker stepped in front of him, blocking his path.   
  
“You are an alien on this planet,” Bricker snarled. “You are under  _my_  authority, and you  _will_  obey my orders.”   
  
Even on the periphery, ten feet away, Owen felt his blood freeze at the look with which the Doctor fixed the haughty general.  
  
“I am under  _no one’s_  authority,” he stated, his voice the temperature of deep space. Bricker bristled in response, apparently still clinging to the delusion that he could win this despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.   
  
“I am the head of UNIT — !”  
  
“And I am the former Lord President of the High Council of Gallifrey,” the Doctor cut him off, soft and growling, seeming to grow taller with every word. “I am Ka Faraq Gatri; the Oncoming Storm.  _I_  am the Lord of Time and you,  _General_ , are  _in. My. Way._ ”   
  
Bricker, looking much smaller than a few moments ago, stepped aside.  
  
The Doctor swept past him, snatching up his coat as he passed the couch, his confident footsteps echoing in the disconcerted hush.   
  
“Owen!” he snapped over his shoulder.  
  
Owen jerked into motion, trying to shake off the chill in his bones.  
  
~~~  
  
There were a thousand things Owen wanted to say as he sat on the uncomfortable grating of the TARDIS console room, holding the Doctor’s toolbox. Not least of all was  _how can you be so full of it and still hate yourself so much?_  Somewhere further down the list, in the category of morbid curiosity, was  _what would you have done if he hadn’t moved?_    
  
What actually came out of his mouth was,  
  
“Were you really president of your planet?”  
  
“For a bit. Twice, actually,” the Doctor said, from somewhere beneath the grating, but didn’t elaborate further. His voice was mild, but Owen knew, from instinct and experience, that he was treading on very thin ice. Still, the Doctor knew that he was the one person in Torchwood who  _wouldn’t_  handle him with kid gloves, and had probably chosen him as an assistant for that very reason. It would be negligent of Owen not to live up to his expectations.  
  
“Seriously?” he asked, not bothering to keep the skepticism out of his tone. “And these were free elections and everything?”  
  
The Doctor’s sigh echoed through the machinery beneath him.  
  
“Does Jack still tell that story of how he was sentenced to death and woke up in bed with both his executioners? Red spanner.”  
  
“Think I’ve heard it, yeah,” said Owen, handing down the tool. “Figured he was bullshitting.”  
  
“Might have been,” the Doctor grunted. “Hard to tell with Jack. But anyway, my presidency — well, my second one, anyway — was sort of like that, except with time travel instead of alcohol and no actual sex. The first one was just a political technicality which I took advantage of for some very complicated reasons which I really don’t have time to explain right now.”  
  
“Did they have anything to do with actually wanting to be president?” Owen asked. Again with that morbid curiosity — the Doctor with political ambition was a slightly terrifying thought.  
  
“Not in the least.”  
  
“Right.” Owen was silent for a few moments, before a thought occurred to him. “What did you do once all those complicated reasons got cleared up and you weren’t being executed?” He could not picture the Doctor, on any planet or at any time, actually dealing with the bureaucracy of government.   
  
“Oh, you know . . . I gave notice, delegated my responsibilities to various officials, made sure emergency elections were set up . . . .”  
  
“You ran like hell, didn’t you?”  
  
“Like a bat out of it.” There was movement, and a muffled thump. “A _ha_! Got it!” More scuffling beneath the grating, a louder thump — “ _Ow!_ ” — and the Doctor emerged, grinning wildly.  
  
“Found them, then?” drawled Owen, working very hard to sound unimpressed.   
  
“Yep! Well, almost,” the Doctor modified, clambering to his feet and stepping over to the console screen. “I’ve looped back the tracker; just need to adjust the parameters and . . . there we go!”  
  
The screen blinked to life. Owen peered around the Doctor at the unintelligible jumble of circles and hexagons.   
  
“And what the fuck does that mean?”  
  
“Language, Owen,” the Doctor chided automatically, and continued as Owen rolled his eyes. “It means that a cloaked space cruiser entered low orbit three days ago, and somebody teleported down from it, then back up, and then . . .”  
  
“Then what?” Owen prompted irritably, when the Doctor trailed off, frowning.   
  
“Then nothing,” said the Doctor. He turned to meet Owen’s gaze, all trace of a smile gone from his face. Owen suppressed a shiver. The look he had given Bricker had been chilling, but it was nothing compared to the endless darkness which now filled his eyes. “They’re still in orbit.”

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack resists the urge to use excessive force, the Doctor does use excessive scariness, and Spencer proves that it’s always the quiet ones.

Torchwood’s doors, while virtually impenetrable (the Doctor being, as always, an exception) and very dramatic in their own right, were not conducive to slamming open theatrically. Therefore, when the Doctor returned to the Hub about fifteen minutes after he left, it was  _not_  with a resounding bang — it just looked like it  _should_  have been. He strode past everyone without any gesture of acknowledgement, his expression thunderous, Owen trailing behind him, several feet back to avoid his flapping coat.  
  
“Oh, you think you’re clever, don’t you?” the Doctor snarled, presumably to the absent offender, his teeth bared as he snatched up a device which Jack had thought to be a burned-out radio. “You think you’re just  _so — bloody — bright._ ”   
  
“He tracked the culprit,” Owen explained, coming to stand beside Jack in front of his office. “They’re still in orbit.”  
  
“Around Earth?” Toshiko demanded incredulously. “How could we miss that?”   
  
“Cloaking device!” the Doctor replied over the buzz of the sonic. “Protects against vision, radar, sonar, energy scanners — but it can’t mask timelines!” He shot up the stairs and then down to the autopsy room, emerging with an armful of equipment which he proceeded to dump on the table and tear apart, ripping out components from half a dozen different devices and combining them in ways that their makers had almost certainly never intended.  
  
“They think they can get away with it. They think that they can  _murder_  600,000 people and not even bother to run afterwards.” The Doctor gave a harsh, mirthless chuckle which made the hairs on the back of Jack’s neck stand on end. “They think that nobody’s watching; that the Earth isn’t defended. Well they can  _think again!_ ” He connected a wire, dodged a shower of sparks, and gave the large, haphazard contraption a solid kick.  
  
It hummed to life.  
  
“Jack, get ready,” he ordered, spinning sharply to face him.  
  
“For what?”  
  
“To stop him.”  
  
There was a blue shimmering in the air between them. It sputtered, wavered — the Doctor hissed something and smacked the machine — and resolved into a young, male, blue-skinned humanoid, who took one look at the Doctor and made a break for it. Jack caught him by the back of his robe and yanked him backwards, not bothering to be gentle about it as he twisted his arm behind his back and held firmly. Around him, his team drew their guns and trained them on the perpetrator.   
  
“Don’t move,” he growled, giving him a shake for emphasis. The alien stilled, but his lips curled in a defiant sneer.  
  
The Doctor stepped forward. Behind him, Anderson was watching with wide eyes and Bricker was visibly keeping himself from interfering, but neither of them moved as the Doctor came to stand directly in front of the blue man.   
  
“Put those away,” he said to the Torchwood team, his eyes never leaving the prisoner’s.   
  
They hesitated, but obeyed when Jack nodded his assent. This was the Doctor’s show.  
  
“What’s your name?”  
  
The prisoner spat something which the TARDIS didn’t translate, but which was almost certainly not a name.  
  
“Now that’s just rude,” stated the Doctor, his light tone belied by the further darkening of his eyes. He leaned in. “I don’t like repeating myself.”  
  
“Jai Grashnik,” the prisoner grumbled reluctantly.   
  
“Well, Jai Grashnik,” said the Doctor, falling back. “Let’s start easy, shall we? You’re obviously not a Regulan, so how did you end up with one of their cloaking devices?”  
  
“First University of Regulus III. I was a student.”  
  
“You  _were_?” questioned the Doctor, his eyebrows creeping up his forehead in false surprise. “Meaning you aren’t anymore, but you’re too young to have graduated, so what happened? Kicked you out, did they?”  
  
“They insulted my work. They scoffed at it. Said I was sloppy, uncreative,” Grashnik growled angrily, twisting in Jack’s grip. Jack gave his arm a vicious jerk in the wrong direction, and he stilled again with a yelp of pain.   
  
“I hate to break it to you, Jai, but they were right. Plagues are messy at the best of times, but this?” The Doctor gestured widely, indicating the planet-wide epidemic with a sniff of disdain. “It’s got no incubation period, long duration, poor fatality rate, and I’ve seen more creativity in cheap romance novels. I mean, really, a modification on a Regulan flu virus? What are you, nine?”  
  
Grashhik gave a wordless growl of fury, but didn’t make any physical move. He was starting to realize the reality of his situation. Good.  
  
The Doctor had circled back around and was leaning towards Grashnik again, bending at the waist to meet the shorter alien’s eyes. Grashnik was barely breathing, his anger not able to mask his fear as he tried to draw back, more terrified of the Doctor’s dark, fathomless gaze than of the man whose hold was threatening to dislocate his shoulder. Jack felt a thrill go up his own spine — it had been a long time since he had seen the Doctor like this, moving with the predatory grace of a panther, spinning words into traps, watching his enemies dig their own graves.   
  
“I’ve seen people do all sorts of terrible things for the sake of their academic reputations,” said the Doctor, his voice somewhere between a growl and a purr. Something was glinting deep within his eyes, like firelight on broken glass. “But most of them were at least trying to learn something. This was nothing but a massacre.”  
  
“They were only humans,” Grashnik gasped out, half scorn and half desperation. He whimpered, but whether it was in pain at the sudden tightening of Jack’s grip or in fear at the hardening of the Doctor’s expression wasn’t clear.   
  
“They were  _people_ ,” the Doctor stated, deadly soft as he straightened.   
  
“Barely. Look —” Grashnik changed tack, switching from anger to bargaining, offering the Doctor an alarmingly ingratiating smile. He was a sociopath, Jack realized belatedly — a master manipulator. The Doctor turned away, beginning to fiddle with his contraption with exaggerated disinterest, but Grashnik kept talking. “You’re not human, I can tell. You’re too clever. So how’s this — you call off your goons, and I give you a lift off this primitive rock. We both forget about this whole thing. I’ll even throw in some cash — 250,000 credits, enough for a fresh start.” Grashnik grew increasingly frantic as the Doctor continued to look unimpressed. “C’mon, you can’t do anything to me, not over these cretins! It’s only a level five planet! They’re mind-blind, barely even sentient!”  
  
Jack felt fury building behind his eyes, having to use every ounce of his self-control to keep from snapping the bastard’s arm — or better yet, his neck. His anger, though, was nothing compared to what flashed in the Doctor’s eyes as the Time Lord spun, teeth bared.  
  
“Do  _not_  talk to me about  _lesser species_ ,” the Doctor snarled, spitting the phrase like a curse. “I might just start listening, and you do not want to know where that puts you.”   
  
He pulled back, visibly reining in his anger, condensing it into something cold and hard.   
  
“You’ve committed crimes against this planet. 600,000 innocent people died in your adolescent tantrum. This teleport is tuned to your biological signature — it will transport you, your ship, and all the evidence needed to prosecute you to the Shadow Proclamation.”  
  
“Remind me, Doc,” Jack growled, giving Grashnik another shake. “What’s their penalty for genocide?”   
  
There was an almost imperceptible shift in the Doctor’s expression, and Jack knew that it pained him to say it, even under these circumstances, but it was something that the humans in the room needed to hear.  
  
“Death.”  
  
Grashnik paled, his face going from royal blue to a rather unflattering periwinkle.  
  
“No, no, please, I’ll do anything! I have money — I didn’t know this planet was under your protection! I didn’t know — please —!”  
  
“Every planet is under my protection,” said the Doctor, reaching over to the machine, “and I don’t make the laws.” He flipped a switch.  
  
Grashnik began to glow an electric blue again, and Jack released him and stepped back, now recognizing the light as a fairly standard long-range teleport. Despite its improvised origins, the jump seemed to be going smoothly — until it froze suddenly. Grashnik, previously squirming futilely against the immobilizing hold of the teleport, stopped moving, stopped blinking, stopped breathing.   
  
Then he screamed.   
  
Everyone leapt back in alarm as Grashnik twisted, stretched, warped like a funhouse mirror. His scream turned to a high-pitched wail of agony and then was abruptly cut off. He was gone.  
  
“. . . what the fuck just happened?” asked Owen, staring at the empty space which Grashnik had previously occupied.   
  
The Doctor wasn’t listening. He spun, scanned the machine quickly, then reached behind it and yanked Spencer into view.   
  
“Dammit, Gwen, I told you watch him!” Jack snapped, as the tiny scientist straightened his clothes with deliberate nonchalance.   
  
“I’m sorry! I thought he was sleeping!”  
  
“What did you do?” the Doctor snarled. Spencer met his eyes unflinchingly.  
  
“I scattered him into his component atoms. I don’t trust the courts, intergalactic or otherwise.” Eerily blank green eyes flickered to where the Doctor’s hand was clamped on his shoulder. “If you don’t let go of me, I’ll bite you.”  
  
The Doctor released him, stepping backwards and staring at him with horror. The anger which he had been using as a shield was fading fast, reaction beginning to set it. Already the faintest of tremors was visible in his hands.   
  
“Ianto, get them out of here,” ordered Jack, jerking his head at Spencer, who stood with a tiny, terrifying smile on his face, and the other two outsiders, who were hovering uncertainly. Ianto began to herd them away, and Jack took a tentative step towards the Doctor.   
  
“Don’t,” the Doctor said. The soft, tired word stopped Jack like a brick wall.  
  
“Doctor . . . I’m sorry. You probably don’t want me around right now, but . . .”  _But you’re pale and exhausted and shaking and hurt and it’s all my fault. I can’t leave you like this._  “Would you rather Gwen . . . ?”  
  
“No.” He turned his head to address Gwen, who was halfway to the door but had paused uncertainly at Jack’s words. “Go see Rhys.”  
  
Gwen nodded her thanks, and was gone.  
  
“You two also,” said the Doctor to Owen and Tosh. “Go home. Get some sleep. Tell Ianto the same when you see him.”  
  
Owen looked ready to protest, but whatever he saw in the Doctor’s eyes stopped him, and soon Jack found himself alone with the wounded Time Lord.   
  
Said Time Lord heaved a sigh and sank onto the sofa. He rubbed his hands over his face, left them there. Jack was strongly reminded of a similar scene three months ago, and had a sudden, intense longing for Martha’s steadying presence. For all that he was over a hundred and fifty years her senior, she was so much better than he was at smoothing things over with the Doctor — maybe because, while she still loved the Doctor, she no longer had the complication of being  _in_ love with him. Jack wasn’t self-deluding enough to think the same could be said for him.  
  
But Martha was across the pond, in UNIT’s prestigious New York branch. Jack was on his own with this one.  
  
He sat down beside the Doctor and struggled to find words. The Doctor surprised him by speaking first.  
  
“Martha’s family.”  
  
“They’re fine,” said Jack, once he puzzled out his meaning. “They will be, anyway. Tom, too.”  
  
“And yours?”  
  
“Yeah, everyone’s okay.” He didn’t know whether the Doctor actually knew about Alice and Steven, or if he was just guessing. He didn’t ask. “You did what we couldn’t, Doc. You found the cure; saved billions of lives.”   
  
“Yeah.” The Doctor’s voice sounded like it was coming from a million miles away, his eyes distant as he stared at his hands. He looked up, but not at Jack — his gaze trailed around the Hub, lingering on the desks, the coffee space, the ladder which led down to the archives.   
  
His eyes were soft and soulful, so different from the hard, flashing fury of earlier. His expression was wistful and longing, his slender hands folded under his chin, his posture loose and relaxed as he rested his elbows on his knees. God, he was beautiful. He was so beautiful it hurt. He was the most beautiful person in the Universe and Jack wanted nothing more than to make him see that, to make him happy and whole, to wash the blood from his hands and the pain from his hearts and to love him until he loved himself.   
  
Jack was so entranced with the Doctor that when he spoke, it took him a moment to register the words.   
  
“I’ve been here too long.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Doctor skewers himself on his own twisted logic, Jack struggles in vain to prevent it, and a special guest comes to the rescue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Contains remixed dialogue from undisclosed episodes – spoilers! – but I’m sure you’ll recognize it when you see it.)
> 
> Last chapter! Thank you so much to everyone who’s read this, and doubly so to anyone who kudo-ed and/or commented. I hope that you’ve enjoyed it, and that I’ve gotten the Doctor to a satisfactorily hopeful point after the hell I’ve put him through. There is a sequel, and it will be up soon-ish. It really depends on RL.

_“I’ve been here too long.”_  
  
“What?” Jack managed to choke out, ice flooding his veins. “Doctor — that’s — you’re welcome here as long as you need.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter what I need,” the Doctor said, with a bitter twist of his lips. “It never has, and I was a fool to think that it would this time.” He sprung to his feet and began to pace.   
  
“Doctor, I’m sorry about . . . all this,” said Jack, rising as well and gesturing helplessly at the remains of the makeshift teleport. “I know it wasn’t what I promised you —”  
  
“Do you think that’s what this is about?” the Doctor snapped, spinning to look at him incredulously.   
  
“Well — isn’t it?” Jack tried, completely lost.   
  
“Of course not!” The Doctor turned away again, scrubbing his hands through his hair in frustration. “You should have told me earlier.”  
  
“ _What?!_ ”  
  
“About the plague. You  _knew_  how easily I could find a cure — the instant you realized that it was an alien pathogen, you should have told me. An hour and a half — that’s all it took. No one had to die.”  
  
“It didn’t seem necessary,” Jack protested, wondering distantly how he had ended up on the defensive. “I thought we could handle it — it’s our own damn planet. Anyway, I made you a promise; I wasn’t going to break it unless I had no other choice.”  
  
“You were trying to protect me.”  
  
Jack hesitated, because yes, of course he had been trying to protect him. He was so broken already, and he poured so much of himself into everything he did — Jack had been and still was terrified at what would happen if he was forced to deal with one more trauma, one more burden. He couldn’t just say that, though — the Doctor would take the words and twist them into condemnation, would use them as yet another instrument of self harm.   
  
Fortunately, the Doctor didn’t seem to actually expect an answer. Less fortunately, he seemed to be doing an excellent job at tearing himself to pieces without Jack’s assistance.   
  
“I’ve been such a coward, hiding here, and I made myself forget — I let myself think that maybe — but no. This is why I don’t stop;  _this_  is why I never stay! I become a liability, and I can’t afford that. No one can afford that. I have a duty, and I’ve been neglecting it.”  
  
“You’re leaving,” Jack stated numbly, realization setting in.   
  
“I’m sorry, Jack,” the Doctor said, with sincere regret. “For today, as well. I shouldn’t have been so cold to you; it wasn’t your fault. You’ve been — oh, so much better than I deserve.”  
  
Jack stared at him, cold shock slowly giving way to hot, bubbling anger. The Doctor wasn’t just leaving — he was  _running away_. Like always. That  _bastard_. That stupid, selfish, infuriating, impossible, beautiful, broken bastard. Jack could fight him on it — he wanted to — but no one could change the Doctor’s mind when he thought he was doing the right thing, and the last thing Jack wanted was for them to part with a row. Still, there was one aspect of this which he wouldn’t stand for.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Jack . . .”  
  
“ _No,_ ” Jack repeated, more forcefully. “Not like this. It might not have occurred to you, Doctor, but there are people here who give a damn. My team cares about you. You can’t just slip away without a word. They deserve better than that.”  
  
He braced himself for an argument, an evasion, a flash of anger . . . but it never came. Whether the Doctor saw his point, or felt he owed him, or was just too exhausted for any more conflict, the Time Lord simply nodded.  
  
“I’ll stay until morning.”  
  
He gave Jack an achingly tender smile, stepped around him, and disappeared into the archives.  
  
~~~  
  
The next morning went pretty much as Jack had expected. Gwen sniffed back tears, hugged the Doctor, and ordered that he take care of himself. If she was tempted to plead with him to stay, then she caught Jack’s eye and thought better of it. Owen griped and grumbled and said, with a flippancy that couldn’t hide the real emotion beneath it, that the Doctor had better learn how to feed himself, because he didn’t want him coming back looking like a fucking skeleton. Toshiko thanked him sincerely, then hung back, never very comfortable in emotional situations. Ianto shook his hand, wished him well, and gave him a nod which had the tone of a salute.   
  
The Doctor accepted their farewells with a pained smile, and kept his own light and brief.   
  
He didn’t object when Jack insisted on accompanying him to the TARDIS. Jack had planned to take the opportunity for some poignant parting words, but they all seemed to catch in his throat. He had known that it couldn’t last — trying to keep the Doctor in one place was like trying to contain fire with your bare hands — but he hadn’t been expecting his departure to be so soon. Not when he still couldn’t sleep without waking up screaming. Not when he still twisted every tragedy until it looked like his own sin.  
  
They strode in silence across the Plass, towards the familiar blue box . . . and the woman leaning against it, reading the newspaper.  
  
 _What the hell?_  
  
Jack turned to the Doctor, opening his mouth to ask if there was something wrong with the perception filter, only to find that the Time Lord had frozen in his tracks, gaping like a fish.   
  
“ _Donna?!_ ”   
  
The woman — late thirties, ginger hair, pleasantly curvy — glanced up, and dropped her newspaper, her face breaking into an ecstatic grin.  
  
“Doctor!” she called back as she broke into a run, and a moment later she was hugging him tightly.  
  
He returned her embrace, grinning wildly now that he had gotten over the shock. Jack looked on, torn between relief that the Doctor seemed to have already picked up another attractive woman as a companion and complete and utter confusion on how he had accomplished it.  
  
“What are you doing here?” the Doctor questioned as they pulled apart. They both took a full step back, Jack noted, and there was no unnecessary lingering on either end. That was good — the last thing the Doctor needed was another sticky situation of unrequited love.   
  
“Looking for you, of course!” said Donna. “Though I see you took my advice,” she added, turning to eye Jack up and down appreciatively. “Donna Noble.”   
  
“Captain Jack Harkness,” Jack returned, shaking her hand and adding just enough flirtation to his grin to rile up the Doctor. Sure enough . . . .  
  
“Oh, don’t start. Donna, Jack’s an old friend of mine. He lives here in Cardiff now; I was just . . . visiting. Jack, Donna helped me with that incident with the Racnoss. Speaking of which, I thought you were going to travel the world. Why are you looking for me? And how’d you find me, anyway?”  
  
“Oh, come on, it’s not that hard. You’re not exactly subtle, what with your big blue box and your suit — honestly, don’t you ever change? You’re all over the conspiracy sites,” she continued, running over the Doctor as he opened his mouth to respond. Jack liked her more every minute. “And then there’s this plague, and no one can figure out where it came from, the governments are brick walling people left and right — it’s got to be alien, right? And all of a sudden there’s a cure — not from Cambridge or New York or anyplace like that, but from  _Cardiff_  — so, well, it had to be either you or some other alien with a habit of saving the Earth, and really, what are the chances of there being more than one of those?”  
  
“. . . right,” said the Doctor, looking a little dazed. “And . . . you’re looking for me, because . . .?”  
  
“Because . . .” Donna’s loud confidence seemed to waver slightly. “It just wasn’t the same. I tried to travel, I did try — went to Egypt. But it was all bus trips and guide books and ‘don’t drink the water’ and next thing you knew I was back home. So I thought — if you hadn’t found anyone — I mean, unless — unless you don’t want me —”  
  
The poor woman looked so insecure, and the Doctor so hopelessly bewildered, that Jack just had to take pity on them.  
  
“She’s saying she wants to go with you, Doc.”  
  
“Come with me?” the Doctor repeated, obviously scrabbling to regain his footing.  
  
“Oh, yes please!” Donna replied with a relieved smile, mistaking his confusion for a request.  
  
“Right . . .” the Doctor said again, shooting Jack a helpless look.   
  
Jack responded with a firm stare which he hoped communicated his thoughts:  _if you turn this woman down you are even more of a self-sabotaging idiot than I thought, and I might be forced to punch you._    
  
The Doctor turned back to Donna with a bright grin, and Jack was pleased to see that it wasn’t entirely faked — artificially enhanced, perhaps, but there was a foundation of real delight behind it.  
  
“It would be my pleasure, Donna Noble.”   
  
~~~  
  
While the Doctor was loading Donna’s luggage into the TARDIS (he had looked slightly stunned at the request — well, order, more like — but hadn’t protested — maybe they did have manners on Mars after all), his friend pulled her aside, all flirtation and amusement dropping from his face. The resulting look was somehow even  _more_  attractive, and she had to focus very hard to catch what he was actually saying.  
  
“Donna, I don’t know how much you know about the Doctor — about his life — but he’s had a bad time of it lately.”  
  
“Yeah,” she agreed, glancing over her shoulder. “I can tell. He looks . . . older.”  
  
And he did, now that she looked at him properly. Older, and more broken, but somehow more healed as well, like he had been shattered and rebuilt into something with more cracks but fewer jagged edges.  
  
“Yeah,” Jack echoed, gazing at the Doctor with a tenderness which immediately squashed any hopes which might have been stirring in Donna’s chest. Bloody typical. All the good men were on the other bus. “Look —” He abruptly turned his attention back to her, grasping her arm and speaking earnestly. “You were with him with the Racnoss, you’ve seen the way he lives. He probably won’t admit it, but sometimes it’s too much, even for him. If it gets to the point where he’s not . . . coping, just — call me, okay?”  
  
She accepted the business card — his name and a number, nothing else — and nodded.  
  
“Yeah, alright,” she agreed, reading the genuine affection and worry in his eyes, and remembering fire and water and a man who had seemed willing to let himself be swallowed by it.  
  
“Oi, you two! Are you going to stand about gossiping all day?”  
  
“Watch it, Spaceman!” Donna called back, turning around with a teasing smile. “We could be swapping blackmail information for all you know!”  
  
“You, maybe,” the Doctor conceded, tugging on his ear as he leaned casually against the TARDIS. “I don’t think Captain Jack would dare. The stories I could tell you about him . . .” He trailed off, his wide grin softening. “Ready to go?” he asked.  
  
“I am, yeah,” Donna replied. “Think I could stand to wait a couple more minutes, though.”   
  
The Doctor’s brow began to crease in confusion, and Donna looked pointedly from him to Jack. The Doctor’s eyes widened in realization.  
  
“Ooooh. Yes, of course.” He stepped forward and offered the handsome captain his hand. “Thank you, Jack. For everything.”  
  
Jack took his hand, and somehow managed to transform the professional handshake into a not-entirely-platonic hug. Donna examined her nails, pretending not to hear Jack’s slightly hoarse “You always have a place here; remember that,” or the emotion which he poured into it. She wondered if the Doctor had any idea how much that poor man adored him.  
  
He probably did, she decided, glancing up in time to see his hand linger on Jack’s arm, his eyes warm with something more than gratitude.   
  
“Right, then!” The Doctor spun on his heel and dashed into the TARDIS. Donna followed more slowly, pausing to wave farewell to Captain Jack, who responded with a joking, two-fingered salute.  
  
The doors closed behind her, and she felt fluttery excitement grow in her stomach as she watched the Doctor dance around the console. There was still something brittle in his smile, something wounded in his eyes, but he was brimming with contagious enthusiasm, glowing with the promise of adventure. He was still broken, still unsafe, still needed someone — but now he had someone.  
  
He had her.  
  
“So, Donna Noble, all of time and space at your fingertips — where would you like to go first?”   
  
“A hill, in Chiswick, about fourteen hours in the future.” No way she was leaving without saying goodbye to her granddad. And after that . . . she always had liked the sound of ancient Rome.  
  
~Fin~


End file.
